


The Extrication of Sherlock Holmes

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BAMF!John, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sherlock figures it out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock met John Watson, he fell into a trap. Sentiment wound its way round him, and he found himself feeling -- and behaving -- in unpredictable ways. This is how he tried to get out of that trap, only to find that the real trap was of his own making,</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as a series of ficlets on Tumblr. Not beta'd or britpicked, so all mistakes are my own. Please let me know if you see anything glaring. Also, I live for kudos and comments!

After Baskerville, Sherlock realized how dependent he had become on John Watson and what he thought. For God’s sake, he even apologized to the man. Just because he used the good will from that apology to attempt to drug him doesn’t mean it wasn’t sincere. And Sherlock simply doesn’t apologize.  
But somehow, it’s become important, what John Watson thinks of him, how John Watson thinks of him. That’s not right. Ever since he first went to primary school, Sherlock has cultivated an unshakable belief that other people’s opinions of him simply do not matter; all that matters is his own, rational evaluation of his actions.  
Well, maybe Mycroft matters a bit. He controls Sherlock’s trust fund after all.  
But Sherlock cannot let John control his decisions and his actions to this extent. He can’t let himself care so much. If he does, he won’t be Sherlock Holmes, and then John won’t look at him with a face filled with admiration.  
If Moriarty gets too close to John, John might not look at him – or anyone else – ever again at all.  
The thing is, Sherlock knows he could have John if he wanted, have him in almost every possible way. John’s jealousy over The Woman had been telling, as had his disappointment when Sherlock declined to betray any feelings for her, or for anybody. John said they were “not a couple,” “not like that.“  
That didn’t mean he didn’t want to be.  
John also told Irene he was "not gay,” a statement Sherlock felt was intended as a deflection more than an answer. Or maybe it was John’s last line of defense.  
Because while Sherlock knew he was fascinated with his friend – John was like a jumper-wearing matryoshka doll who still had layers for Sherlock to peel away – he knew without question that entering into that kind of relationship would only hurt John. Sherlock wouldn’t be able to control his impulses to experiment on him (see: Baskerville, apology coffee). He wouldn’t be considerate to him. He would leave him at crime scenes and wake him in the middle of the night and hurt his feelings and make him angry. Sherlock would continue to disappoint him. Sherlock did not want to look at John and see disappointment in his eyes. He wanted John’s eyes to sparkle as he declared Sherlock “Amazing!” and “Brilliant!”  
At the same time, Sherlock’s enemies would see John as an even more tempting target. He’d already been kidnapped, drugged, threatened with a gun, wrapped in Semtex. John had held up admirably to all of it – Sherlock almost felt proud of him – but what would happen when someone decided not to play with him, to threaten him to get to Sherlock, but to destroy John to destroy Sherlock?  
Because Moriarty knew. Sherlock knew Moriarty knew. Moriarty knew Sherlock knew. That’s what his threat at the pool had been about. Sherlock could not let Moriarty carry out that threat; if John was destroyed because of him, that would be the end of Sherlock Holmes.  
So Sherlock was facing a two-pronged attack on his persona, no, on his very identity. One, he had to find a way to work without relying on John so much. John might be his conductor of light, but Sherlock needed to remind himself that he was brilliant on his own if he wanted to be Sherlock Holmes.  
Two, he had to keep John safe. Maybe he couldn’t let John get so entwined with the work, but Sherlock didn’t want to live in a world that didn’t have John Watson in it. He would have to find a way to make it so that Moriarty wasn’t interested in John. And keep John away from Moriarty in the meantime.  
Sherlock picked up his phone and dialed.  
“Hello, brother mine.”


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to London, little brother. TW for torture. It's not graphic.

Sherlock hung his head and closed his eyes, trying not to feel the strain in his splenius muscles, the strain that continued through his levators scapulae and his trapezoids and over his deltoids and sparking through the rhomboideus muscles in his back.  
He didn’t know exactly how long he had been chained up by his wrists – his internal sense of time had deserted him, oh, about 72 hours into his most recent captivity, as the Serbians refused to allow him to sleep and seemed to have no regular schedule of when to beat him, when to burn him, when to let him collapse into a heap on the damp, cold floor and when, very rarely, to offer him tepid water that tasted a bit brackish. He didn’t know how long he had been there, alternately trying to keep his weight on legs that no longer wanted to support him and letting himself hang from chains, putting painful pressure on his shoulders and back and cutting off the circulation to his hands.It didn’t matter, he thought. They kept asking for information, but at this point, he wasn’t even sure if he knew what it was they wanted. He wasn’t sure they knew. They just wanted to make him suffer.  
Sherlock did the only thing that helped him handle the pain. He let his consciousness sink into his mind palace, placing him on the sofa in Baker Street. In his mind, it was dark outside, and a fire crackled in the fireplace. The room was dim, with only the red lamp near the couch lit, but there was a spill of light from the kitchen. John was walking out of the kitchen, the firelight burnishing his hair, carrying two cups of tea. John put one mug on the coffee table in front of Sherlock, and then surprised Sherlock by setting the second mug down as well and sitting beside him. That’s not what John usually did, Sherlock thought. He usually retreated to his chair, turned on the lamp above it and read a book or attempted a crossword puzzle. Sherlock turned to scan John’s form, hoping to deduce why John had changed his pattern. Did that mean he wanted to change his relationship with Sherlock? John wore the red cardigan and check shirt that were Sherlock’s favorites, Sherlock noted as his eyes traveled over his flatmate. When Sherlock reached John’s face, he realized John was watching him look. And John had just licked his lips.  
Sherlock groaned and shook his head, keeping his eyes tightly closed. Even his mind palace was betraying him, showing him things he never had and never would, things he wasn’t even sure he wanted until he had left. Strange to say, nothing had made Sherlock realize how necessary John was until he left him. He found himself visiting his flatmate and friend night after night, huddled in cheap hotel rooms and under overpasses, wherever he could find a place that felt safe enough to let his guard down for a few minutes. When he’d had John with him, he never had to worry. John would watch his back.  
After he left London, he began to think of going back, of walking into the flat and making tea and waiting for John to join him, then waiting for John to look at him like that, then catching John’s eye and seeing where it could go. But Moriaty’s web proved more extensive and more tangled than Sherlock and even Mycroft had known, and the months turned to years and Sherlock wondered if John had forgotten the joy they shared in the chase. There was no joy in this chase.  
Now, this last time, when they used helicopters and dogs to hunt him down, when they beat him for the pleasure of seeing his pain, he knew he would never know if John would have forgiven him for saving his life at the cost of his own. But he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. The world needed John Watson in it if it was to be any kind of world at all.  
A rough hand in his hair brought him back to reality. A hand in his hair that was not John’s, a hand in his hair that hurt as it yanked his head back, breath that stank of onions in his face, hissing that he only had to tell them what they wanted and this – brandishing a pipe – would end. It wouldn’t necessarily end well, Sherlock thought, almost huffing a laugh. He opened his eyes to look at the man, and saw Mycroft seated in front of him, observing the proceedings.  
A hallucination? His mind conjuring up Mycroft supervising his torture the way he had overseen Sherlock’s stints in rehab? No, a Mycroft in his mind would not have such an ill-fitting uniform. If Mycroft was here, and not in chains, it looked like he was going home after all. Time to distract the thug sent to beat him. Time to be Sherlock Holmes.


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Into battle

It was intolerable. The tie around his neck had felt like it was strangling him, and watching John dance away from him had felt like dying. Like he had willingly walked into his death.  
So he had walked away, trying to avoid thinking about the pain by remembering the many remarkable moments from the day:  
How glorious John had looked in his wedding suit, polished and shining and for once not hiding in a shapeless jumper.  
The way John embraced him while he was giving his speech. While he and John had been careless of personal space when they were flatmates, that kind of contact was rare. They had certainly never embraced in front of a roomful of people like that.  
The way John looked at him while he was giving his speech. Not during the proper speech; at the end, when he realized what was going to happen, and John knew there was something coming and had snapped to attention.  
The way John had rendered aid to Major Sholto, keeping him together – literally – until the emergency services could arrive. When it came to saving lives, John was brilliant all on his own.  
He had more John-memories from the wedding than from almost any day since he had returned, and he supposed he should be grateful. He knew that his opportunity to create more would be curtailed in the weeks and months to come.  
The wedding also had so many John-moments that he wished to delete altogether, but he never could, not if they included John. There was the moment when John promised to love, honor and cherish Mary, the way he kissed her after they danced to Sherlock’s waltz, the moment when he realized Mary was pregnant, and John would be ensnared even more firmly into a new family.  
He had tried calling Mycroft for support before the speeches, but this time, Mycroft hadn’t helped. His only advice – “Don’t get involved” – had come years too late.  
But Mycroft wasn’t the only one late to the party. Sherlock wondered again what would have happened if he had understood his own feelings sooner, if he had realized that his love (not just attraction, not just affection, but real, bone-deep love) for John would not fade when he left him behind. Would he have said something, or would he have been too afraid? If had said something, would John have responded the way he hoped? He’d once thought John wanted to develop their relationship into something more, that he used “not gay” as a shield to hide his feelings from those who might pity him for falling for a man who couldn’t love him back.  
When he came back, though, John had Mary, and Sherlock knew the role of one who loved him was to place John’s happiness above his own, and he tried, oh, how he tried.  
Then John and Mary went off on their sex holiday – Sherlock persisted in calling it what it was, because euphemisms never stopped the pain – and Sherlock found himself obsessing over what they were likely doing. When he could wrench his mind from pictures he most assuredly did not want to see, he sneered at himself for his own maudlin thoughts. He certainly wasn’t the Sherlock Holmes he used to be, was he? He had been brilliant, his lack of sentiment allowing him to perceive indications and connections that everyone else missed. It turned out he had been right all along: Love did make him less than himself. What he needed was a case, he thought. Time to be Sherlock Holmes again.  
Lady Smallwood’s request could not have come at a better time. An important case, with a truly malevolent villain. A blackmailer, who stole people’s very lives out from under them. It would be easy enough to garner his interest; all Sherlock need do would be to contact him as Lady Smallwood’s agent. He had to make sure, though, to give Magnussen a way to blackmail him as well, an unsavoury habit that Magnussen would think could be used against him.  
Well.  
If the drugs had the effect of clarifying his mind (there was nothing like the way his razor-sharp thoughts sliced through problems when he was on cocaine) or helping quiet his thoughts (hello, heroin), or both at once, all the while giving Magnussen a reason to think Sherlock was under his thumb, that was a benefit.  
John wouldn’t like it.  
The thought snaked into his consciousness like an unwelcome weed. Who cared what John thought? Sherlock told himself, his internal voice almost vicious. John wasn’t here. John left him.  
But maybe he did need help. He knew someone who worked for Magnussen. Janine, from the wedding. Maybe she could be persuaded to help. Well, he said persuaded. He sent her a text asking to meet for coffee the next day, after he had a chance to return home and clean up.  
He went to his wardrobe and pulled the tatty old track bottoms and a stained hoodie from the very back. From his chest of drawers he pulled a t-shirt washed thin and soft. It was one that John had left at 221B when he moved out while Sherlock was dead. For this, it wouldn’t matter that it didn’t fit properly.  
After changing, Sherlock went out to find a likely dealer, someone who could sell him the drugs and the needles and give him a place outside of the privacy of Baker Street to shoot up. For this to work, he needed to be seen.  
Into battle.


	4. Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The most important person in the world

Sherlock opened his eyes to light that was too bright and a stabbing in his brain, just behind his eyes.  
No, not stabbing.  
Beeping. Monitor. Hospital.  
Shot.  
Sherlock closed his eyes and felt the morphine help him drift away from his body. The pain was still there, of course it was, but it seemed to exist separately from him. His chest felt as though it had been punctured and sliced open, like someone had dug around in it for hours before closing it up again. Which they had, once just after he was shot (recast: after Mary shot him. Must say it the way it happened.) Once again after he collapsed on the floor at Baker Street, just after sending John back into Mary’s arms.  
That wife.  
But what else could he do? He hadn’t had time to dig far into her background, but what he learned after escaping hospital the first time made him certain that Mary had a body count far higher than John’s. That wasn’t fair; John had been a doctor as well as an officer and had relatively few opportunities to engage in direct combat, Sherlock surmised. Mary had a higher body count than anyone in John’s old unit. That was better.  
If John tried to walk away, she would kill him too. She would do anything to stop that happening. That’s what she told Sherlock – and John, although she didn’t know it at the time. Besides, John loved her, and she was carrying a child and planning to make a family with John.  
Far better for their little family to carry on. Just knowing about Mary’s past could feed John’s need for excitement in his life. Sherlock could go on as he had; he had extricated himself from the trap he’d found himself caught in when he moved in with John as neatly as possible. Maybe Mary would even allow John to come on cases with him from time to time, now that she had seen and heard him pushing John back into her arms.  
So why did he feel like it might have been better if he had bled out on the floor, before emergency services arrived?  
Because he’d had to push John back towards Mary. The thought rose unbidden. That night at Baker Street, John had been furious, in a rage the likes of which Sherlock had never seen. Some of it was directed at him, yes, but most of the anger was for Mary. For Mary, Sherlock thought, and for John himself.  
When Sherlock pushed John into identifying Mary as a client, John had taken his seat, spoken to her about what would happen next, included himself and Sherlock in the word “we,” excluded Mary with the word “you.” She was the third wheel there.  
When Sherlock fell, John had held on to him until the paramedics nearly pulled Sherlock from his arms, repeating his name. It was all too reminiscent of the pavement outside Barts, when he heard John crying, “He was my friend” and “Jesus, no.”  
Sherlock shook his head against the pillow, his eyes still closed. Those were not the memories of John he wanted to keep with him.  
He felt a gentle touch on his wrist. A warm hand, small for a man. Calloused fingers. Not seeking a pulse this time – that blasted monitor was still beeping, thank you very much – just establishing that he was present.  
“Sherlock? Are you awake?”  
John. John was here. Not with Mary. Here with him after all.  
Sherlock opened his eyes again.  
The light didn’t seem so bright any more. The room was fairly dimly lit, he realized. John was seated to his right, a newspaper crumpled to the floor next to his chair, his clothes wrinkled, the bags under his eyes and his pallor betraying a sleepless night.  
“There you are,” John said, his fingers keeping their loose hold on Sherlock’s wrist. “You had me worried. They did surgery to stop the bleeding as soon as you arrived last night, but you’ve been under for nearly 24 hours.”  
“John?” Sherlock croaked. His mouth felt like sandpaper and tasted worse. “Water?”  
“You can probably have some ice chips in a moment – let me call the nurse and let her know you’re awake,” John said, standing and pressing the call button that rested next to Sherlock’s pillow with his right hand. His left hand – his dominant hand – still hadn’t left Sherlock.  
Sherlock nodded to show he understood and waited for the flurry of activity that would come with the nurse. A check of his vitals, glances at the monitor settings and the IV bag that was dripping saline and morphine and God knew what else into him, approval of John’s suggestion of ice chips, and he was gone. An aide delivered a plastic pitcher with ice chips a moment later, and John held some to his mouth in a plastic spoon.  
John didn’t say anything.  
Well, he said “Here” and “Open your mouth” and “Better?” He didn’t say anything about why he was in Sherlock’s hospital room instead of with Mary. Sherlock felt too tired to ask, but he needed to know.  
“Mary?”  
John looked at him, not surprised. “She’s at home, I think,” John said. “She texted earlier to ask if she could come sit with me, but it seemed like when someone gets shot, the person responsible should at least wait until the victim is conscious before they visit, yeah?”  
Not really funny, John, Sherlock thought.  
“Honestly, I didn’t want to see her, at least not yet,” John said. “I know you said we could trust her, but she shot you. If you really think I should go back to her, we can talk about it later” – John looked troubled here – “but for now you need rest, and when you get out of hospital, I’m coming to stay at Baker Street with you.”  
Sherlock tried to shake his head.  
“Yes, Sherlock. Unless you want Mrs. Hudson helping you to the toilet and in and out of the shower?”  
Sherlock contemplated John helping him in the shower and did not respond.  
“I didn’t think so.” John sounded satisfied. At least somebody was satisfied. “Sherlock, I know everything has gone to absolute shit right now, and I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. But we can figure it out later. You need to heal, you need help, and you are the most important person in the world to me. Of course I’ll take care of you.”  
Sherlock closed his eyes. Shouldn’t John’s most important person be his wife or the child she was carrying? He probably meant the most important besides them. But John calling him most important – that felt good. Maybe it was the morphine. Maybe he was just getting pulled further into the trap he was trying to escape.  
John was right. They could work all that out later.


	5. Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back into the trap

Sherlock curled into himself, bringing his right hand to his face as if he could still catch the scent of John there.  
He felt the plane taxiing, gathering speed. They were airborne.  
He was not going to cry.  
He was not going to cry.  
He was not going to cry.  
He was not going to see John again.  
His vision blurred and his breathing was harsh.  
He was not going to cry.  
He was crying.  
He might as well give in. He’d finally done it. He’d extricated himself from the web he’d created when he invited John to live with him. Sentiment. Mycroft always said caring was not an advantage. Well. It had ruined him. Why not cry?  
He’d gotten away from John, yes, but at the likely cost of his life. That was one way to get out this trap.  
Sherlock’s thoughts glanced over the past months. There had been moments when he thought he was wrong, that he could have John in his life and be in John’s life and it wouldn’t matter that his mind was all tangled up in John, in strands of soft blond hair and threads of frayed wool and shades of blue that changed with John’s mood.  
John had stayed with him for weeks after he left hospital, long after he needed anything like medical care. Still, John got the shopping, John nagged him to eat, John told him to go to bed at night. John cared, and for those weeks, John chose him.  
Sherlock knew it couldn’t last. John was married to Mary, who was going to have a child. Mary would not allow John to walk away from her. Mary was dangerous. John liked dangerous.  
In the time John was back in Baker Street, Sherlock never saw him text Mary or heard him speak to her, but he knew they had been in contact. Sometimes when John came back from the shops or from work, he was more agitated than he should be. John told him Mary was no longer at the surgery, and a good thing, too, because now that he knew she wasn’t really qualified to be a nurse, he would have had to sack her.  
John had attended a few prenatal appointments. He always came home with a perplexed look on his face, a mixture of darkness and light.  
Then there was that awful Christmas. His parents, so pleased to finally meet his friends, John uncomfortable with them (he had asked again before they left, “so they knew you weren’t dead?”). Wiggins, a young idiot most of the time, but with potential. Mycroft, behaving as if he were too posh to sit in his parents’ kitchen. Mary, tight lipped, unforgiving. She should have been asking for John’s forgiveness, but he wasn’t sure she knew how. He wasn’t sure he knew how to ask for forgiveness, before John.  
He had a plan, a plan that would make Mary safe, or at least make her safe from Magnussen. He’d hoped, he’d hoped that John would take the information and use it himself, trade it to Mary for his freedom. Then John could come back to Baker Street to stay, and it wouldn’t be the same and he wouldn’t be the same because John, but it would be all right, it would be better than all right, it would be brilliant, because John. He could tell John that he made the world warm and fun and safe in a dangerous kind of way, that he made Baker Street home, that he didn’t know how to be Sherlock Holmes without John Watson anymore. Maybe John would put his arms around him and embrace him. Maybe John would kiss him. Maybe, if John knew he could have Sherlock, he would stop saying “not gay.” He hoped.  
Or John and Mary could take the files and destroy them and go live their suburban life and raise their child and he would be Mr. Sherlock who visited at the weekends and took cases just so he could tell John about them. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it would be enough. He would work part way out of the trap of John Watson, maybe enough to look on John’s quiet family life with pity instead of jealousy.  
Magnussen, though, had made a fool of him, had humiliated John for the pleasure of it. What else could he do? At least this way, John would be safe, or as safe as he could be with Mary. Sherlock had made sure that as part of the deal, Mycroft returned John’s gun. He might need it, living with Mary, who definitely had enemies. John was responsible; he’d never shoot anyone if he didn’t have to.  
He’d almost told John, there on the tarmac. John had looked up at him, the way he used to, and Sherlock wanted to tell him, to confess how thoroughly he’d been ruined. But instead of admiration and fascination, Sherlock read love and heartbreak on John’s face, and Sherlock didn’t want to make it worse, he wanted to make John smile. So he made a lame joke, and they shook hands and parted.  
Yes, he was crying.  
A phone beeped. The flight attendant? guard? agent? picked it up and murmured something too quietly for him to hear. Or he just didn’t care.  
“Sir?” the man said. “It’s your brother.”  
“Mycroft?”  
“Hello, little brother. How is the exile going?” his brother asked.  
“I’ve only been gone four minutes.”  
“Well, I certainly hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Mycroft said. “As it turns out, you’re needed.”  
“Oh, for God’s sake. Make up your mind. Who needs me this time?” Sherlock said.  
Back to John. Back into the trap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Ariane DeVere for the transcript of [HLV](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/67234.html)


	6. Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not a trap. Home.

Sherlock sat in his chair and waited.  
The chair across from him was empty.  
John should be sitting in it, Sherlock thought. John should be sitting there with his shoes off and his socks on. He should be smiling, and looking at Sherlock with that admiring light I his eyes. He should have a drink. Tea? Or Scotch?  
Sherlock wasn’t sure which one the situation called for. He wasn’t sure how John felt about the events of the day, or really, the events of the last few months. The last few years?  
John had shot Mary and looked magnificent while he did so. Sherlock remembered the look on his face when he walked onto the roof (Did Mary choose the roof to intimidate John? Did she not know the man? He might have nightmares for months from being up there, but that would never stop him from taking action in the moment).

Mary had Sherlock backed up to the parapet, her gun trained on his head this time. This time, when she told Sherlock she’d shoot if he moved, he believed her. She’d shown Sherlock the text she had already typed out for John “Sherlock’s on the roof at Bart’s! Please come” and hit send.  
John got there two minutes and 34 seconds more quickly than Sherlock expected. John managed to foil Sherlock’s expectations again and again.  
When John stepped out on the roof, there was fear in his posture, but it disappeared under the righteous anger John wore armor. He pulled his own gun, and Mary (really - did she know John at all?) had the temerity (stupidity) to mock him.  
“Oh, John, do you think you’re going to shoot me?” she gibed. “We both know you’re not. Do as I say and maybe – maybe – I’ll let you walk away.”  
“Put the gun down,” John said, his tone low and even.  
“You’d never take a chance on Sherlock –”  
John had fired his gun, cutting off whatever she had been about to say. Not a head shot. Left side of the chest, about where she had shot Sherlock all those months ago. There had been so much blood. She was pregnant. Of course there was more blood.  
John tossed Sherlock his mobile, barely sparing him a glance, with instructions to call Mycroft.  
“Shouldn’t we call 999 first? She needs emergency treatment,” Sherlock said.  
“Mycroft’s got a crew on standby,” John said, pressing his scarf to the wound in Mary’s chest in an attempt to slow the bleeding. “If we can keep her alive until she gets to an operating theatre, the baby should be all right.”  
“What about Mary? And the baby? What will happen?” Sherlock had asked, tucking John’s phone in his pocket after firing a text to Mycroft: “John says now.”  
“I don’t really care what happens to Mary,” John said. “The baby’s an in innocent bystander, and I really don’t think she’s mine. If that’s the case, Mycroft will have someone find a nice adoptive family for her.”  
Then the rooftop was overrun, John was spirited away (with Mycroft?) and Sherlock found himself in a black car being driven to Baker Street.  
It wasn’t until he texted John to find out where he was and what was going on that he realized he still had John’s phone. He heard the text tone ping from his coat and nearly growled in frustration. He texted Mycroft instead (“Well? SH” “Patience.” “I have John’s phone. SH” “He knows”).  
Sherlock looked at the phone in question, now sitting silent on the table next to John’s chair. He didn’t know how John felt, he thought, so maybe I should figure out how I feel. First, John had been magnificent.  
Second, he felt left out. John and Mycroft had been planning together (obvious) and Sherlock hadn’t known. John had fooled him. He felt foolish. Because if John had fooled him, maybe he could have been in on the Lazarus plan. Then Mary wouldn’t have happened (would she? No, certainly not) and none of this would have happened either. On the other hand, they had neutralized a very prolific assassin, so that was a result.  
Third, John should be here. Now. This was John’s home. John was his home. He once knew (thought he knew?) he could have John if he wanted, any way he wanted. Now he knew that John already had him, in every possible way, and he only wanted John to want him. John wasn’t a trap; John was shelter and safety and warmth and home.  
He heard the street door open and John’s step on the stair. John was tired. But he was walking steadily, without hesitation. He went past the door to the sitting room, appearing in the kitchen, and setting a carrier bag on the table.  
“I got takeaway,” John said unnecessarily. “I would have called to see what you wanted, but, well, you had my phone.”  
Sherlock didn’t respond.  
“OK, that was obvious,” John said, licking his bottom lip.  
Sherlock didn’t respond. He just kept looking at John, trying to memorize all the shades of his hair and the lines on his face. This was John-the-day-he-came-home, and Sherlock wanted to keep him in his Mind Palace forever.  
“Sherlock? You’re starting to scare me,” John said.  
“You’re not a trap,” Sherlock blurted. “You’re home.”  
“Well, yeah?” John said. “Do you want to eat?”  
“Yes. Yes, let’s have dinner,” Sherlock said. “Do you want a drink? I could make tea. Or your Scotch is still here.”  
“Actually, I picked up a bottle of wine,” John said, pulling a pinot noir from the bag. “I thought we might share it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please come find me at [JustLookFrightened](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/justlookfrightened) on Tumblr!


End file.
